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Published | 2023/07/12 |
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Status | article incomplete |
Beau says:
Sweden's potential NATO membership signifies a strategic blow to Russia rather than a significant military gain for the alliance, impacting geopolitical positioning.
Foreign policy analysts
The full transcript provides a detailed analysis of the implications of Sweden joining NATO, offering insights into geopolitical strategies and the impact on Russia's influence.
#NATO #Sweden #Russia #Geopolitics #ForeignPolicy
Well, howdy there, internet people, it's Beau again.
So today, we are going to talk about Sweden,
and NATO, and Russia, and what's transpiring.
Because as soon as the news broke,
a whole bunch of questions came in.
For those who missed it,
Sweden now looks like it is definitely
going to become part of NATO.
The roadblocks seem to be gone.
One of the questions that came in basically asked why is this such a big
deal for NATO? These countries that are joining now or have recently joined,
they're not particularly strong nations. How is this such a win?
Remember the point of an alliance, at least in theory, is to kind of divide the
costs. It's not that every country has to have a massive military. It's that the
militaries together are, well, unparalleled. So you have that aspect of
it. With the countries around the Baltic, it's locking down the Baltic Sea. You're
already hearing the term NATO lake which is not good terminology and not even
entirely accurate but rest assured that term will come up a whole lot. The Baltic
Sea is not as strategically important as it was say 40 years ago but it does have
importance and the the countries that have been joining that are reinforcing
that area, it provides NATO with a lot of leeway, especially when it comes to
deterring any potential Russian aggression. So you have that. The other
thing that NATO is getting out of this, I think it can best be summed up by
something a defense analyst recently said. They were talking about how T-55s
These really old Russian tanks are being used in Ukraine and the analysts basically said,
you know, a T-55 today is better than an Abrams in a week.
The availability of those forces right there, even if they aren't as overwhelming as the
U.S. military, they're already there.
There's not a deployment phase for that.
So NATO gets that.
But realistically, this isn't a huge NATO win.
It's a NATO win, but the reason it's being treated the way it is, is not because it's
a massive transformation of NATO.
It's not a huge NATO win, it's a huge Russian loss.
That's really more where this is coming from.
Russia kind of tipped its hand and let everybody know that it was hoping to rekindle its imperial
designs.
And when that happened, it triggered a lot of countries to align themselves with NATO.
One of Russia's big talking points was, well, we don't want NATO on our border.
That's why we had to invade a country.
It doesn't make any sense, but that was one of the talking points.
The response of countries on or near their border seeking to join NATO, it costs them
geopolitically.
As we've talked about before on the channel, the war in Ukraine is lost.
Russia lost the war.
Now it's just, it's just imperialism.
There's nothing else.
no wider geopolitical plays because on every front it went against Russia.
This just cements that more.
This will be a thing that is in Russian history books as just a massive error that cost Russia
a whole lot.
If Putin does not realize how this plays out long term and doesn't alter course in Ukraine
soon, it may be the thing that knocks Russia out of the world power spot.
They may have to go sit at that lower stakes table.
When we use that analogy of foreign policy being an international poker game and everybody's
there are different tables and right now Russia is sitting at the highest stakes
table in the place. If this conflict drags on it will it will weigh on the
country so heavily that they may end up losing their seat at that table. The more
Or the more various countries align with NATO, the less influence they have.
Russia turned its eyes towards Europe.
The other places where Russia could theoretically expand its influence, China's already there.
So it isn't so much that Sweden joining is this massive boost to NATO, it's that Sweden
joining is a massive loss to Russia.
They don't have to be the same thing.
So it's going to impact their naval operations, Russia's naval operations, but it's more
about geopolitical positioning than actual military strategy.
So that's the reason this is going to be treated, in many ways, this will be treated like a
bigger deal than a lot of the other countries that joined NATO recently.
So it's not necessarily about the benefit militarily to the alliance.
It's more about the message and geopolitical positioning that is being sent to Russia.
Anyway, it's just a thought.
Y'all have a good day.
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